Rhetoric in Elections

Every four years during a presidential election, each nominee attempts to make the voters believe that they are just an average joe. A successful example of this is how the way Reagan talked allowed one to believe that he was just another one of the guys when the reality was that he was a wealthy movie star. As the presidential election is just around the corner, it means that it is time for another presidential primary. During these primaries, each candidate attempts to prove to the majority of the population that you should vote for him because he is an average American just like the voter. This is ever present as Mitt Romney, the front-runner in the Republican primary, is attempting to prove that he is one of the average Americans. But this is far from the truth, as he, as well as many other political candidates, has attained significant personal wealth. The only difference on this issue from other candidates is that Mitt has gained most of it through private business acumen. Nonetheless, Mitt is still trying to appeal to be one of the average Americans. Unfortunately, this is one point that the other candidates won’t let rest as they are trying to force Mitt to publically release his tax records. Although it may have been a problem if the records showed that he wasn’t an average American, it is an even bigger problem that Mitt still hasn’t released these records. It is the thought of, “He must be guilty of something if he wants to withhold them from public scrutiny”, which ultimately does more political damage than just making them public. In the end, most Americans know that these candidates live a completely different lifestyle than themselves, so it isn’t that much of a shock to see that the candidates make a tremendously larger amount of money than the average American. But it is those “what ifs” that can do major damage when it comes time to tally up the votes. Nonetheless, it seems that every time there is a presidential election, each candidate attempts to use rhetoric to make voters believe that the candidate is just one of them, and yet the reverse is usually true, and these attempts to recast themselves in the image of an all American joe almost always holds very little ultimate impact.